What the L.A.P.D. Concluded About the Knife Found on O.J. Simpson’s Property

As FX’s American Crime Story has us remembering, the O.J. Simpson murder trial was full of soap-opera-like twists and turns, perhaps none stranger than the development last month, over two decades after Simpson’s acquittal, when police began investigating a knife found at Simpson’s former estate. And on Friday, the L.A.P.D. closed this bizarre epilogue to the trial by sharing their conclusions about the knife after extensive forensic testing.

“We have confirmed, we have determined, there is no nexus [between the knife and the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman],” Police Captain Andy Neiman told reporters, including the Associated Press, on Friday.

The Los Angeles Times has more details about the knife, which a retired L.A. police officer said he received from a construction worker who was helping tear down Simpson’s Brentwood home more than a dozen years ago. Per the report, the tool was a rusty, five-inch fixed-blade knife.

Despite the fact that the L.A. County coroner testified that he thought the weapon used to kill Simpson and Goldman was at least six and a half inches long, police still put the knife through a battery of tests, examining it for blood, fingerprints, and DNA.

“That is not the knife,” an L.A.P.D. source reiterated to the L.A. Times, adding, “There is no evidence related to the crime.”

Upon hearing news of the development last month, the trial’s lead prosecutor Marcia Clarktold reporters, “I can’t believe someone gave a police officer what appears to be, could be, important evidence in a case—even if it is closed—and takes it home. I don’t know what to say about that except I can’t believe it, but it’s apparently what happened.”

According to the AP, a lawyer for the retired police officer claims that his client “attempted to hand the knife over to the L.A.P.D., but he was told there was no need because Simpson had been acquitted.”

Simpson is currently serving a Nevada prison sentence for attempting to retrieve sports memorabilia he said had been stolen from him. He will be eligible for parole next year.